During World War II , while serving as a minister in London, John Bertram Phillips was disappointed to find that the young people in his church did not understand the Bible. Therefore, he began to paraphrase in modern English the New Testament in the periods he spent in the bomb shelters during the London Blitz. (Lamps, candles, soot, dampness!! Imagine!) The youth responded enthusiastically to the first book finished, Colossians, and so he continued to translate the entire New Testament after the war into colloquial English. The news of the past weeks seems to indicate that the youth of Great Britain need refreshing from His Word once again.
Although I continue to appreciate Phillips’ translation of the New Testament today, J.B. has impacted me MOST by the title of a book that I’ve never read, Your God is Too Small. I honestly don’t know what is between its covers. It probably parallels the freshness of his Bible translation, but, plain and simple, the title grabs me! AND sadly, it describes me!
I don’t know about you, but these communiqués have reminded me that personally, inside MY own heart, mind, and daily expectations, I have continually squeezed God into a Being too small. God speaks to me in Psalm 50:21 when He says: “You thought I was altogether like you, but I will rebuke you and accuse you to your face.” Whew! He has.
One young pastor wrote recently, “Only God is absolute, and God has no intention of sharing his absoluteness with anything, especially words people have come up with to talk about him. This is something people have struggled with since the beginning: how to talk about God when God is bigger than our words, our brains, our worldviews, and our imaginations...The moment God is figured out with nice neat lines and definitions, we are no longer dealing with God. We are dealing with someone we made up. And if we made him up, then we are in control.”
I guess some might say, “Shut down the communiqués. These words, these definitions, these quotes, these Bible verses are worthless. HE’S TOO BIG! Just give up!” I think not. Instead I am going to let J.B. and this young pastor encourage me to keep going to Scripture, keep digging, keep listing, keep describing, keep looking for clarity, keep hungering and thirsting, keep “chewing the fat” with you. I WANT TO UNDERSTAND OUR ALL-POWERFUL, BIG GOD. I NEED TO UNDERSTAND AS MUCH AS HUMANLY POSSIBLE A GOD THAT IS NOT TOO SMALL…
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EVERYWHERE, EVERY MOMENT GOD IS OMNIPOTENT!
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EVERYWHERE, EVERY MOMENT GOD IS OMNIPOTENT!
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English Dictionary from Freesearch.uk.com
OMNIPOTENT
having unlimited power; able to do anything
Thesaurus.com
Main Entry: OMNIPOTENT
Part of Speech: adjective
Definition: all-powerful
Synonyms: almighty , divine , godlike , mighty , supreme , unlimited , unrestricted , absolute , controlling , invincible
Antonyms: ineffectual , insignificant , powerless , weak
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The Bible says:
Genesis 1:1 - In the beginning God created…
Genesis 18:14 - Is there anything too hard for the Lord? I will return to you at the appointed time next year and Sarah will have a son.
Numbers 11:22-23, 31a, 32a - But Moses said, “Here I am among six hundred thousand men on foot, and you say, ‘I will give them meat for a whole month!’ Would they have enough if flocks and herds were slaughtered for them? Would then have enough if all the fish in the sea were caught for them? The Lord answered Moses, “Is the Lord’s arm too short? You will now see whether or not what I say will come true for you”…Now a wind went out from the Lord and drove quail in from the sea…All that night and day and all the next day the people went out and gathered quail.
1 Chronicles 29:11-12 - Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the majesty and the splendor, for everything in heaven and earth is yours. Yours, O Lord, is the kingdom; you are exalted as head over all. Wealth and honor come from you; you are the ruler of all things. In your hands are strength and power to exalt and give strength to all.
Job 26:14 – These are but the outer fringe of his works; how faint the whisper we hear of him! Who then can understand his power?
Job 42:2 - I know that you can do all things, no plan of yours can be thwarted.
Psalm 33: 9, 50:1 – For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm…The Mighty One, God, the Lord, speaks and summons the earth from the rising of the sun to the place where it sets.
Jeremiah 32:17 - Ah Lord God, behold, thou hast made the heaven and the earth by thy great power and stretched out arm, and there is nothing too hard for thee.
Daniel 2:21, 4:35b - He determines the course of the world events; He removes kings and sets others on the throne…He does what he pleases with the powers of heaven and the peoples of the earth. No one can hold back his hand or say to him: “What have you done?”
Ezekiel 22:14 – Will your courage endure or your hands be strong in the day I deal with you? I the Lord have spoken and I will do it.
Jonah 1:17 - But the Lord provided a great fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was inside the fish three days and three nights.
Matthew 19:26 - Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”
Ephesians 1:19,20; 3:20,21 – I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know…his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms…Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever. Amen.
Colossians 1:17 - He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
Revelation 1:8, 11:16-17 – I am the Alpha and the Omega, says the Lord God, “who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty.” …And the twenty-four elders, who were seated on their thrones before God, fell on their faces and worshiped God, saying: We give thanks to you, Lord God Almighty, the One who is and who was, because you have taken your great power and have begun to reign.
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C. H. Spurgeon - God’s power is like Himself, self-existent, self-sustained. The mightiest of men cannot add so much as a shadow of increased power to the Omnipotent One. He sits on no buttressed throne and leans on no assisting arm. His court is not maintained by His courtiers, nor does it borrow its splendor from His creatures. He is Himself the great central source and Originator of all power.
Norm Geisler – If it is power that you can manipulate, it is not God. If it is a power that created the universe that chooses to express itself one way this time, and another way at another time, for our good and His glory, then it is God.
Isaac Watts (1674-1748)
I sing the almighty power of God, that made the mountains rise,
That spread the flowing seas abroad, and built the lofty skies.
I sing the wisdom that ordained the sun to rule the day;
The moon shines full at God's command, and all the stars obey.
I sing the almighty power of God, that made the mountains rise,
That spread the flowing seas abroad, and built the lofty skies.
I sing the wisdom that ordained the sun to rule the day;
The moon shines full at God's command, and all the stars obey.
Stephen Charnock (Puritan Theologian) - The power of God is that ability and strength whereby He can bring to pass whatsoever He pleases, whatsoever His infinite wisdom may direct, and whatsoever the infinite purity of His will may resolve. . . . As holiness is the beauty of all God’s attributes, so power is that which gives life and action to all the perfections of the Divine nature. How vain would be the eternal counsels, if power did not step in to execute them. Without power His mercy would be but feeble pity, His promises an empty sound, His threatenings a mere scarecrow. God’s power is like Himself: infinite, eternal, incomprehensible; It can neither be checked, restrained, nor frustrated by the creature.
A.W. Tozer – The word derives from the Latin and is identified with the more familiar ALMIGHTY which we have from the Anglo-Saxon. This latter word occurs 56 times in our English Bible is never used of anyone but God. He alone is almighty. God possesses what no creature can: an incomprehensible plenitude of power, a potency that is absolute.
Anonymous –
Come thou Almighty King. Help us thy name to sing. Help us to praise.
Father all glorious, o’er all victorious. Come and reign over us. Ancient of days!
Come thou Almighty King. Help us thy name to sing. Help us to praise.
Father all glorious, o’er all victorious. Come and reign over us. Ancient of days!
Wayne Grudem – Although God’s power is infinite, his use of that power is qualified by his other attributes (just as all his attributes qualify his actions).
Lewis E. Jones (1899) - There is power, power, wonder-working power in the blood of the Lamb.
A. W. Pink Well may the saint trust such a God! He is worthy of implicit confidence. Nothing is too hard for Him. If God were stinted in might and had a limit to His strength we might well despair. But seeing that He is clothed with omnipotence, no prayer is too hard for Him to answer, no need too great for Him to supply, no passion too strong for Him to subdue; no temptation too powerful for Him to deliver from, no misery too deep for Him to relieve. “The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?” (Ps. 27:1)
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As we finish with Scripture and wisdom of Bible lovers, I go a different direction with an interesting, yet troubling quote from another nightstand book, Infidel. The author of this autobiographical book, Ayann Hirsi Ali, was voted one of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People of 2005. Her story covers the years of growing up in a completely Islamic world, searching throughout most of it for a satisfying, fulfilling life as a valued Muslim woman.
Ayann Hirsi Ali describes her questions at age 17 – “I needed to get to the core of what I believed in ….I needed my belief system to be logical and consistent. Essentially, I needed to be convinced that Islam was true….I began collecting together all the verses in the Quran that said God was wise, God was omnipotent, God was just – there were many. I pondered them.”
At the end of her ponderings, Ayaan rejected everything of any god. So who IS BIG in this woman’s world? If you are like me, you want to KNOW, SEE, and EXPERIENCE A BIGGER-THAN-LIFE, GIGANTIC GOD! I want more than Ayaan’s pondering! I want to get beyond mere pondering. I don’t want to miss what HE is revealing about Himself everywhere, every moment.
May you and I live and pray like George Mueller, another pastor in England a little older than Phillips, who saw God alive in the “dailies” as he asked “God to lead him to a work that could only be explained by the people as an act of God.”
Almighty God, yes, you are OUR Superstar!
Yet You walked the dusty streets as the Only Begotten Son, Jesus.
You came “with skin on” offering friendship and intimacy, joining us in the moment by moment challenges of life,
taking the punishment on the cross for our rebellions against YOU.
Then you demonstrated your POWER OVER DEATH THROUGH the RESURRECTION.
YOU, Holy Spirit, God now live inside “our skin” with POWER ready to be unleashed in our lives to help us experience you daily in fullness.
Lead the way, Oh POWERFUL ONE!
In your Mighty Name I pray, Amen!
Needing Him along with you,
Sue
P.S. PRAYERFUL PONDERINGS ALONE OR WITH OTHERS:
· OMNIPOTENT GOD, what do these feeble attempts to describe You, THE INCOMPREHENSIBLE GOD, have to do with REAL LIVING AND THINKING?
· OMNIPOTENT GOD, where am I with squinty eyes and controlling heart missing YOUR BIGNESS?
· OMNIPOTENT GOD, how am I limiting you by my “small view?”
· OMINIPOTENT GOD, how have I seen you BIG in my past and/or in others’ lives? Have I forgotten?
· OMNIPOTENT GOD, where are You demonstrating YOUR IMMEASURBLE POWER in the “dailies” of my life – deadlines, job applications, crying babies, achy feet, cash flow, flat tires, the scary evening news, war?
(YES, THE DAILIES! In a Young Life group led by our good friend, Kym, a teen asked some months ago, "How do I see God as my friend, someone who is "with" me and not just someone who is like a superstar on a poster in my room?” A BIG, BIG, BIG, BIG GOD WHO TOUCHES MY DAILIES…)
Do you have time and brain power to go further on this topic? Enjoy the thoughts of Rev. James Petigru Boyce (1887).
But, while God is not subject to the limitations which thus affect us, he also is limited in his power. These limitations, however, are such as arise, not from without, but from the excellence and perfection of his own nature. Hence the limitations are concurrent with his will, which can never desire to do what his nature does not permit.
1. God cannot create a being or world to which his essential incommunicable attributes can be given, viz. : infinity, embracing eternity and immensity, and self-existence.
2. He cannot create a being whose nature is sinful. The nature he bestows on any creature becomes the law of that creature, so that for any nature to be sinful, it must have been changed from conformity to the law of its creation.
3. He cannot impose laws which are not accordant with righteousness and holiness.
4. He cannot deal with any of his creatures unjustly.
5. He cannot commit sin.
6. He cannot change his own nature.
7. He cannot change his decrees or purpose.
8. He cannot do impossibilities.
If it be asked why he can do none of these things, the answer is, because his own nature is to him the law of what he does, as well as of what he wills and of what he is. He is not just and holy because he wills to be so, but he wills to be just and holy because he is so. His will does not make his nature, but his nature controls his will.
An apparent objection to the infinite power of God is the presence of sin in the universe.
The holiness, justice, and even goodness of God render it impossible that sin can be either created or permitted as something indifferent to God. He must hate it, and punish it wherever it appears.
Its presence therefore is due either to the fact that he could not prevent it, or that he has permitted it for some wise purpose.
What that wise purpose is, ought properly to be shown in proof that the existence of evil is consistent with God's goodness.
That its presence is due to such purpose, rather than to lack of power of God, appears from the fact that he could have prevented it. This he could have done
1. By not creating beings capable of sinning.
2. By not allowing them to be placed in circumstances which would lead to sin.
3. By sustaining and fortifying them in those circumstances, so as to counteract the temptation and keep them from sinning.
4. And, (as the objection is the rather to the continued existence of sin than its origin,) by the immediate destruction of those who have sinned.
But so far from the presence of sin showing lack of power in God, it has served the more signally to display that power.
1. Over sin itself, in its destruction and punishment.
2. Over its final victims, by causing them to feel and acknowledge the terrible power of his wrath.
3. Over others, by their signal deliverance through his power, not only from the penalty, but from the presence of sin.
4. In the sin itself, by exhibiting that restraining and conquering power, by which God makes evil itself to work out his purposes of good and glory.
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